Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/364

356 we were aware of Mademoiselle’s return, and it was arranged in spite of that that we should meet this evening: was it not so, my friend?”

He turned to his companion, who nodded rather sulkily, and turned away with a half weary, half dissatisfied air.

Eleanor looked at the two young men, wondering what new friends her father had made in Paris. The Frenchman was short and stout, and had a fair, florid complexion. Eleanor was able to see this, for his face was turned to the lamplight, as he talked to her father. He was rather showily dressed, in fashionably cut clothes, that looked glossy and new, and he twirled a short silver-headed cane in his gloved hands.

The other man was tall and slender, shabbily and untidily dressed in garments of a rakish cut, that hung loosely about him. His hands were thrust deep in the pockets of his loose overcoat, and his hat was slouched over his forehead.

Eleanor Vane only caught one passing glimpse of this man’s face as he turned sulkily away; but she could see the glimmer of a pair of bright, restless black eyes under the shadow of his hat, and the fierce curve of a very thick black moustache, which completely concealed his mouth. He had turned, not towards the lighted shop windows, but to the roadway; and he was amusing himself by kicking a wisp of straw to and fro upon the sharp edge of the curbstone, with the toe of his shabby patent leather boot.

The Frenchman drew George Vane aside, and talked to him for a few minutes in an undertone, gesticulating after the manner of his nation, and evidently persuading the old man to do something or other which he shrank from doing. But Mr. Vane’s resistance seemed of a very feeble nature, and the Frenchman conquered, for his last shrug was one of triumph. Eleanor, standing by herself, midway between the sulky young man upon the curbstone and her father and the Frenchman, perceived this. She looked up anxiously as Mr. Vane returned to her.

“My love,” the old man said, hesitatingly, nervously trifling with his glove as he spoke; “do you think you could find your way back to the Rue l’Archevêque?”

“Find my way back? Why, papa?”

“I—I mean, could you find your way back a—alone?”

“Alone!”

She echoed the word with a look of mingled disappointment and alarm.

“Alone, papa?”

But here the Frenchman interposed eagerly.

Nothing was more simple, he said; Mademoiselle had only to walk straight on to the Rue Neuve des Petits Champs; she would then, and then—

He ran off into a string of rapid directions, not one of which Eleanor heard. She was looking at her father, Heaven knows how earnestly, for she saw in his face, in his nervous, hesitating manner, something that told her there was some sinister influence to be dreaded from this garrulous, eager Frenchman and his silent companion.

“Papa, dear,” she said, in a low, almost imploring voice, “do you really wish me to go back alone?”

“Why—why, you see, my dear, I—I don’t exactly wish—but there are appointments which, as Monsieur remarks, not—not unreasonably, should not be broken, and—”

“You will stay out late, papa, perhaps, with these gentlemen—”

“No, no, my love, no, no; for an hour or so; not longer.”

Eleanor looked up sorrowfully in the face she loved so dearly. Vague memories of grief and trouble in the past, mingled with as vague a presentiment of trouble in the future, filled her mind: she clasped her hands imploringly upon her father’s arm.

“Come home with me to-night, papa,” she said; “it is my first night at home. Come back, and we’ll play écarté as we used at Chelsea. You remember teaching me.”

Mr. Vane started, as if the tender grasp upon his arm had stung into his flesh.

“I—I can’t come home to-night, Eleanor. At least, not for an hour. There—there are social laws, my dear, which must be observed; and when—when a gentleman is asked to give another his revenge, he—he can’t refuse. I’ll put you into a carriage, my darling, if you think you can’t find your way.”

“Oh, no, papa dear, it’s not that. I can find my way.”

The Frenchman here interposed for the second time with some complimentary speech, addressed to Eleanor, who very imperfectly understood its purport. He had slipped his arm through that of George Vane, taking possession of him in a manner by that friendly gesture. In all this time the other man had never stirred from his sulky attitude upon the edge of the pavement.

Mr. Vane took his daughter’s hand.

“I am sorry I can’t take you to the theatre, my love,” he said, in the same hesitating manner, “I—I regret that you should be disappointed, but—good night, my dear, good night. I shall be home by eleven; but don’t sit up for me; don’t on any account sit up.”

He pressed her hand, held it for a few moments, as if scarcely knowing what to do with it, and then suddenly dropped it with something of a guilty manner.

The Frenchman, with his arm still linked in the old man’s, wheeled sharply round, and walked away towards the Barrière Saint Antoine, leaving Eleanor standing alone amongst the passers-by, looking wistfully after her father. The other man looked up as the Frenchman led Mr. Vane away, and slowly followed them, with his head bent and his hands in his pockets. Eleanor stood quite still, watching her father’s erect figure, the short Frenchman, and the tall, sulky stranger following the other two, until all three were out of sight. Then turning homewards with a half-repressed sigh, she looked sadly down the long lamplit vista. It was very beautiful, very gay, brilliant, and splendid; but all that splendour and gaiety made her feel only the more lonely, now that her father had left her. The first day, the natal day of her new life, seemed to end very drearily, after all.